I have, as a friend put so well, a self-indulgent guilt about having grown up a boy. It isn’t productive, I can no more control my upbringing than one can choose the name they were given at or before birth, but it is very, very hard to shake and redirect.

These are hard thoughts that I don’t see asked enough. Am I a girl born in a boys body or am I a girl who was a boy? Does it matter? I am a woman regardless of the answer to this question and just as valid irrespective of how others feel about it, but the answer matters to me: in the uniqueness that is my life, am I responsible?

Just what am I responsible for? What good can I do with my experience of lived and learned manhood, regardless of if it was real or faked, and how can I use it productively instead of indulging myself with guilt?

My father taught me a lot of things about how not to be a man. From cheating on his wives and girlfriends, to doing anything and everything in the pursuit of revenge against some apparent slight, he wasn’t my strong male role model that too few boys are lucky enough to ever have. He has money and power and all the privilege afforded to people with money and power, yet, not once can I look back on my life and see where he used it to help others.

No, when I think of my dad, I think of regret. I think about loving someone who, when he knows who I really am, will do as much as possible to keep me from happiness. I wish I could look back on him and think about all of the times he was a force for good in my life, but all I can do is think back to being choked for calling him a liar, or when my little sister was cutting herself, he remind her that she probably felt bad because she was getting too fat.

I think about a girlfriend of his, of which there were many, coming into my room to tell me that she’d always be there for me. She wouldn’t, she had talked to me maybe three times, but I think about her breaking down in my bedroom when she realized he wouldn’t be back for her tonight, just like he wasn’t back for her the night before, and the night before that. I can still see her making strange promises to me while she was trying to process a breakup that he hadn’t told her about while talking to a thirteen year old who had seen this happen too many﻿ times before.

I can envision going to work with him every day and passing Planned Parenthood, where he’d, like clockwork, talk about evil, irresponsible women killing their kids. I can remember thinking about how many women he’d deliberately lied to and fucked without a condom, too, and the hypocrisy of him.

For all of this, the worst was the ridicule I was subjected to when I tried on my older sisters clothes. I can remember hearing her lock me out of my own room when she’d found out, getting out her Nokia 3310, and laughing to him about how much of a pervert I am. I can remember begging her at the door to not call Dad. I can remember waking up to a furious beating on my locked door once I’d regained entry and he’d come home about how I’d “better never go into her room again” the next morning.

Men are often so afraid of what women can do alone that they will do almost anything to diminish their ability to live without them. In my own life, I wasn’t just denied the ability to live without men, I was made my own jailer. Shame from my father, family, and self did nothing to keep Evelyn from wearing the clothing she knew she should wear, but it did everything to keep Berkson from understanding who Evelyn was when he’d look into the mirror. Evelyn, the girl that I always had the power to be, really became quite powerless with no one to advocate and defend her… when it was easier to make a part of myself a fetish. To call her a whore. To be a pervert.

I am responsible for my actions and I’ve contributed to my own oppression against the women inside of me. I could have been brave and listened to my heart, but I didn’t. I could have asked myself why dressing in women’s clothing made me feel so good, but I didn’t want to know the answer. I could have understood that dreams about being born a girl weren’t just thoughts that everyone has, and when confronted with the suggestion that I could have been a women this entire time, I’ve always told myself – and others – that it could never be true. I am responsible for being a coward and hiding behind a fragile masculinity that I could have always rejected.

And I remain responsible ever since making a decision to be afraid and embrace something that shouldn’t have been me. Not being in complete control of how one was raised does not excuse their behaviour because of it, and finally understanding Evelyn does not erase Berkson.

I could have always been a better ally to women, to my little sister, to even boys. Embracing masculinity, especially when your only examples of masculinity is by it’s very nature toxic and wrong, doesn’t make good men. Being taught how not to be a man is not the same thing as being taught what not to do and just because one might understand that they’re being taught the wrong things does not at all make them immune to similar behaviours. I have snapped bras and insulted women. I have let things go that I shouldn’t have in the interest of being a part of the pack, like an animal. I have belittled men in the same way that I was ridiculed by family.

I have made comments, what I would have called jokes, at the expense of the sense of security a girlfriend had with me and was surprised and bitter that she didn’t see it that way, too. If I had known… if I had not been such a cowardly boy, maybe I could have been a brave girl instead? If Evelyn had been there, I hope that she would have beat the shit out of me. But, I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know, and I’m responsible for not knowing.

I learned how to be a man, a good man, on my own. I learned because adulthood has no room for useless men, and a man who doesn’t completely respect, learn from, and advocate for women isn’t worth anything. I learned because I grew up and was able to decompartmentalize many parts of me that shouldn’t belong and recognize why they were bad without having to be taught. It was mine, and I did it, and I am responsible for that.

I’m responsible for turning out an acceptable and even sometimes an exceptional human being despite having odds stacked against me, yet, I remain responsible for doubling down on my own denial of Evelyn’s existence. Surely, I’m a good husband, a good male submissive, a good man… So how could I ever be a woman?

At the very heart of toxic masculinity is an unwillingness to see that traditionally feminine qualities are only traditional because of misogyny. A boy, a man, a person should be allowed to cry without fear of being judged by any of their peers. Being free to explore themselves and not reject the parts that society has urged particular qualities within the spectrum of gender be placed.

I have found her, and have apologized to her, and am doing everything that I can to become her, but there will always be damage that I’ve done to myself and experiences that I missed out on from an upbringing of fear that I can’t ever restore. I lost out on a childhood that I might have had. I missed out on growing up a girl and learning how to be a woman, but the fact is that there’s nothing I can do about any of that now. The best that I can do now is recognize that there were good parts of Berkson, too.

Life could have been different for me. It certainly wasn’t good for me to live a lie, but I still managed to become someone worth being, and I won’t make the same mistake by suppressing him. Berkson wasn’t Evelyn, but Evelyn isn’t going to be someone completely new: she’s going to be me, and me is a combination of experiences, mistakes, lessons, and difficulties that I respect for what they are.

That’s what it comes down to for me. In the uniqueness that is my life, I am responsible. I am responsible for what I’ve lived, but I will remain responsible for how I live: Don’t make the same mistakes twice, Evelyn. I can teach people who will listen, and I call out those who don’t. I get to experience tribulations that I would never be otherwise privy to as a man while simultaneously knowing what it’d be like if I were one, too. Part of being a good man is, unsurprisingly, the same for good woman: owning up to your mistakes and doing better.

Almost as if these were just human things and not determined by gender at all.

I feel like I’m in a clock that tics faster the closer it gets to twelve. Each day is getting faster and everything that happens between now and January, the good and the bad, is felt so much more clearly than if it would have happened a year ago, and these events aren’t just limited to the material. My thoughts, my feelings, my relationship: everything is on overdrive right now.

I don’t win this race. When I take a step back and evaluate everything that’s happening it’s just so clear to me that life isn’t going to get easier the faster everything is moving. More, much more, sooner than I’ll be ready for it and it’s going to hit me all at once. Honestly, there are a couple of options I have to deal with this… I could harden myself so that it breaks on impact, I could try to solve these issues before they happen, or I can let it hit me and pick up the pieces.

I’m going with the last option and the reasons are a little emotionally complicated for me. I deal with stress very well, I’ve had to for so long. It’s absolutely helped develop me into an adult that I’m proud of being… but, just once, I want to be able to loosen my grip on my life and just experience things in a way that I haven’t prepared for.

Another step back. Maybe, just maybe, this is the healthier option?

I could put in the work every day from now until January to be ready for all of this, but the cost is time. I could take it a bit easier at work and focus on the extra, but the cost is well-being. Or I could let it happen, I could lose the race, and just be inconvenienced.

That’s it. All that’s going to happen to me is inconvenience. I’ll do almost anything to be ready for nothing. Seriously, the three paragraphs above are weeks of thought condensed and it didn’t occur to me that the healthiest option was to accept that I don’t have to be ready for everything until I fucking dreamed about it. Yikes.

The truth is that I’m not prepared to leave my job yet. I’m not prepared to be a student. I’m not prepared to live differently.

I’m not prepared to move on from known comfort, stability, and order to chaos.

So I don’t win. I use the opportunity I have now to learn what it’s like to pick up pieces safely, to practice failing before it can hurt me, and to prepare myself for when it can. My life is going to become more enjoyable to live but harder to inhabit and this is my chance to see what it’s like when things do fail and learn how to handle that.

Busy & Boring sums up the last two months of my life pretty well. I’ve harped on about being nearly done with this job for a while now, but now that it’s actually starting to unwind it’s just all happening so damn fast.

I’m starting to turn over my work to someone new, and I’m doing what I can to improve the processes used by various divisions attached to my organization with how they turn in aircraft components. This is an issue because, as you can imagine, when people are busy they tend to care more about the “work” than they do about the “accountability”, and telling Mx. Smith that they need to find the component that they misplaced or they’re liable for somewhere in the six figure range isn’t ideal or, really, a good way of doing business.

It’s boring work, but it’s already paid dividends here, and the cool thing about what I’m doing is that a lot of it allows me to find previously lost or still missing assets. I’m all about this kind of thing.

There is just so much going on now though. Work alone isn’t always busy, but the planning that I have to do for my personal life is threatening to suffocate me. Planning for taking a class this next semester which will earn me an associate degree, planning for going back to school full-time in the Spring, dealing with immigration for a few different places of which the certainty for usefulness or timeliness doesn’t really exist in the first place, baby dog needing surgery on her jaw, and, like I mentioned, not being employed anymore.

That’s the hardest one really. I am a good worker and a valuable employee. I make good money, I have good health care attached to the job for me AND Eiren, but I want to do something else with my life and it’s terrifying to think that a future employer will see my sudden break in employment, even if it’s to go to school, and think “Why would I hire this monkey if I could just hire someone young who doesn’t expect as much?”

This says nothing about the more immediate fear that every dollar I’m spending now is a dollar out of my future. I have the money saved up for school and I’m ready to go it almost debt free, but I am scared about not keeping the same quality of life for Eiren.

Ugh, I’m certainly not the first person to have these thoughts, I know that. My life is always improving because I have the drive and determination to make it so, and this is no exception. I’m glad that I have the sense to worry though, even when I know that things will be okay for everybody.

The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #108? Start with the rules, come back July 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish

The past few weeks have been so busy. I moved out of one apartment nearby work to another a few kilometres away. The noise is better, I don’t have to hear planes taking off all night, but I do miss out on the nightly screaming and hate-fucking that my neighbours have serenaded me to sleep with every night. Bigger home, more traffic. More money to compensate for distance, time, and food, but the hit on convenience cannot be understated. Alas, some wins, some losses.

I’m a fan of moving. I’ve talked about this before , about how the act itself is a nightmare but the time I get to spend with either Eiren or my thoughts is wonderful… and, as I’ve talked about even more, I spend a lot of time with my thoughts already. So what does one think about when they’re already thinking about everything?

Apparently, the same thing that everyone else just happened to be thinking about. I’ve had five separate friends speak to me about casual to petty jealousies. Some generality, some specifics within our own Community, but all of it just seemed so… familiar?

Eiren is a jealous person. What’s hers is hers and that’s all there is to it. I’m not for sharing, it isn’t up for discussion, nor would I tolerate the discussion if I felt that there were ulterior motivations, such as feelings of doubt spurred by a particularly bad depression day that may cause her to have a lapse in judgement that she doesn’t really support (sidenote: consent means being considerate of disabilities and how they affect judgement at certaintimes).

Still, she’s not a child. We both understand how far that extends and what the true boundaries are, especially when almost all of it isn’t true jealousy, just some of the cute pettinesses that drive healthy relationships with humour. I smile when I read things, when I’m writing things, when I’m enjoying myself, and perhaps one of my favourite things about Eiren is her ability to ask in complete, bristling seriousness:

Who the fuck are you smiling at?

Only to have it disappear instants later when I’m honest. I’m, of course, speaking to a friend, reading their writing, posting something funny for other people, enjoying myself in a video game with many others, or even helping someone. It’s such a genuine thing, watching it disappear with an “Oh…”, prompting me to prod and tease her back:

You don’t like other people making me happy, do you?

“I hate it.” she half-truth’s to me. No, she doesn’t hate it. My happiness is the only thing that matters to her, and seeing me smile for anything other than the joy she gives me only provokes a greedy need to keep every aspect of it to herself for an instant until she remembers that it wouldn’t be right to cloister me from the world and that hoarding the sight of my smile to only her givings isn’t exactly reasonable, or at least feasible. 😛 Needless to say, compersion in regards to me doesn’t always inspire rational emotions.

This sweetness doesn’t preclude the green-eyed femdom’s existence, however. Eiren is a jealous person, and we’ve had to talk about this before so we both understood where it was coming from, what it meant, and how it affects our relationship. None of these were ever hard, but they’re understandably uncomfortable, scary conversations, and this is healthy fear. It means that we’re both giving it our honest, vulnerable, open thoughts.

Perhaps the most important example is how insecurity leads to very real feelings of inadequacy and intense jealousy. I’ve surrounded myself with some brilliant, amazing, and beautiful women, where I talk and blog about my relationship, about our bodies, and perhaps most sensitively, sex. This is terrifying for her, replete with perfectly valid reasons on why this is hard and why she is scared.

I just feel like you think I’m not smart enough to talk about this with you…

On why we don’t really ever talk about femdom in the way I talk to other people about it.

I’m always so afraid that you’ll find someone amazing and beautiful that isn’t broken like me.

In which she fears me being poached by someone charming, smart, and more wonderful than her.

Do you wish my dominance was more like your smart femdom friends…?

The most reoccurring threat, one where I might wish she were someone else. It implies a potential resentment with who she is, and plants a seed that asks of her when she sleeps, when she showers, when she feels her body ache or when her mind is playing tricks on her: “Am I good enough for Evelyn?”

And, in complete honesty, it took a long time to understand what that question meant to me. Did I want Eiren to be more like my friends? No. Immediately, the answer is no, I do not… but there was morethere. I could feel it, hiding beneath the surface, wanting to break free from a set foundation. Did I want any change? Yes, me… I wanted to change me.

My submission is modeled much off of others dominance. Off of their caring, and respect, and standards for themselves before standards for others, and I think that this is why the green-eyed femdom, for all of her fear… never really ran. I submit, often, with servant leadership, by supporting from the front, and by being able to understand and emphasize with her fears.

No, Eiren is my ideal femdom. She’s sweet, and vulnerable, and caring. She puts me before her, where I put her before me, and we tackle the challenges and peace together, regardless of how hard and easy they might be. We’re, despite it’s implications, a team, and we look to each other before we look to the world outside, and, most importantly to me, we’re learning.

Always learning. From others, from friends, from hurts and victories, deliberately or by accident, we’re always learning how to be better for each other.

The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #107? Start with the rules, come back June 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish

Poetry

Blogging

I’ve done a lot of things for the greater good in my life. I can remember getting on a plane at eighteen with just a back pack to go meet Eiren, a woman who’d just found out that I’d been lying to her about my age for two years.

We don’t often think about the consequences that our actions might incur until it’s too late and too little can be done to prevent them, but sometimes our mistakes teach us valuable life lessons. Lying to her almost cost me the two years of relationship building that we had together, a best friend, a girlfriend, and a Mistress, and if not for the fact that I had truly learned my lesson, I’d have a completely different life now.

That lesson helped propel my life into many things that weren’t even in the scope of what I could consider when I learned it, but it’s importance can’t be understated. It’s been, to say very little, an wild ride and part of the foundation that I’ve used to build myself as an adult.

With all of this said, I’m still endlessly surprised that I’m continuously underestimated by the people who’ve known me the longest, my family.

Every time I make a choice, every time I know what’s best for myself, every time I set boundaries, every decision I make… Is the wrong one. I’m the black sheep and, even in the best of circumstances, inconsequential until my livelihood is an inconvenience.

Berkson married a fat woman.

I married my best friend and the love of my life.

You’ll never be able to accomplish this goal.

I did it without your help and by myself.

Do you need me to help you get rid of your “problem”?

Eiren isn’t a problem, Dad. Are you trying to get rid of yourself?

He’ll always be my little boy. Are you sure that this isn’t just a phase?

It isn’t a phase, and your little girls name is Evelyn.

Did Eiren talk you into doing this?

The lesson I learned was to always do things that I truly feel are the right decision and to always do them to be honest with Eiren and myself. I’m not infallible, but every decision I make isn’t wrong, despite what I’ve been told so often.

I have to live my life understanding that my actions have consequences, that honesty is always the best policy, that I’ll make mistakes, but most importantly, that it’s my life and the only person who can dictate it is Eiren.

When we were in Seoul, we spent a lot of time in Myeong-dong. It’s known for being a relatively mainstream and hip shopping area, but expensive. I saw this key in one of the many little jewelry shops that we’d gone into the first time we visited but hesitated to pick it up because of the price… On the second visit, though, it was marked down and I snagged it at an even better price after haggling some.

Unfortunately, the chain that it came with wasn’t exactly high quality, but Mistress had another idea in mind for it anyways. She went to another little jewelry shop down the street from where I live that specializes in bespoke products and had the chain replaced with a nice bit of strong cord and had our other key added behind it.

I didn’t notice until she leaned down to tease me that my freedom was just one turn away… I had a choice: Share my discovery and denial or give into my urges and lose that feeling.

I’m writing this on the bus, Eiren and I are heading to Seoul just for the chance to get some amazing Korean fusion tacos again from our now favourite place in the city. I don’t live so far away from the city, but it still takes around 30 minutes for us to get there. Public transportation is an amazing commodity that, coming from Northern California suburbs, I never really had an opportunity to care about or need. This matters to me because it all seems very surreal right now… it’s Sunday and Eiren leaves on Tuesday morning. The last time we were in this situation, I was driving us to San Francisco in my work truck so we could go have dumplings and spend time in Wicked Grounds. Every time we’re about to be apart, we find some place to eat good food and spend private time with each other.

I don’t want her to leave. I’d like to get on the bus with her every single Sunday and take us to Seoul for tacos, but I felt the same way in California too, I would have rather spent the six hours each Sunday in traffic to and from just to get us some dumplings and spend more time at Wicked Grounds than have to leave home. Alas, I’m on contract. I go where the job takes me and I put up with the shortcomings because they helped me save Eiren’s life. One final hurrah from the job is the least I can do for the health she has now in exchange for what I have and the happiness I have because of it.

The bigger picture isn’t often kind to relationships in the now, but almost always pays dividends later, and this has been especially true in ours. I don’t want her to leave. I don’t, I don’t, I just fucking don’t, but I know that it’s not forever. Life is happening and we’ll move forward with our happiness regardless if the now is happy or not.

Blog Direction

All the sadness aside, I always have reasons to be happy. I never take this for granted, especially when I know that there have been so many other girls in my place now who couldn’t be happy under the same circumstances, and I try to make sure that I share that as much as I can… and I think that’s why I’ve finally started to understand why I made this blog in the first place. I’ve had things to say before, I’ll have things to say later, but this was never about me having things to say, I think it’s always been about having a voice and now I know what that voice sounds like.

I get a unique opportunity to blog about femdom as a submissive transgender woman with an in-depth understanding of my own submissiveness as a man and how my transition will affect me and my world. My triumphs, challenges, opinions, thoughts, life… I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about where I’d like to take this blog, and honestly, it’s only now occurred to me that I could just… use it as a fucking blog like all of my other favourite writers instead of focusing on things that I think are important or that people will like to read.

I’m just going to write about as much as I can. I want to share my transition, I want to share the small things that I usually overlook because I think that they’ll be boring… I just want to share me. All of me. The whole person approach to submission doesn’t work when I only ever consider the whole person when I think that they’re important.

I’ve already started transitioning into womanhood, but since my last post I’ve made the decision to set the pace in the moment and not worry too much about the end goal. I’m going to get there, so I shouldn’t make it a matter of when or how, but focus on the me and now.

What is important to me now, though? Eiren. Eiren is always important to me in the now, so focusing on her comfort is itself focusing on my comfort, and so we discuss my transition. We discuss wants, and needs, and reassure each other of our commitments and expectations. We want a child, and frankly, time is working against us. Eiren is turning 40 this year and is rightly concerned about fertility and health issues, for herself and a baby, and I want to begin hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as soon as possible. We compromise easily, there is no hurt, just mutual understanding and love. Both of us want what the other wants and we’re a team in a timed race.

So we’ll give it another year. January, 2020 instead of 2019. A full year of trying to get pregnant, a full year without the worry of me leaving for work and the consistency that I’ll be home every night with a smile, although maybe an exhausted one from school. This is the date that I’ll begin HRT unless our work pays off before that time and she manages to get pregnant earlier.

After Eiren, the next thing that’s important to me is… me. I’m not the most important thing in my life. There are parts of it that will be important or take priority, but it’s only really ever if that aligns with what she needs. Keeping myself healthy is one such thing that matters more, for example, because it allows her peace of mind, it keeps me strong, and it let’s us stay happy together for longer.

I came to a lot of good conclusions in my last post and I didn’t want to waste them, though, so I’ve taken advantage of my insight: I’ve hired a voice coach, I’ve decided that I’ll dress how I’d like as soon as I can, and I’ve started to shave my body hair every day. These are little things that I know I can do in the now, or soon enough, that will have a strong immediate impact on my happiness and a lasting long-term impact, too. It’s smart of me, that is to say, these goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

The negatives, or at least the challenges, can’t be ignored either, even if they are validating in their own fucked up ways. My kink is changing and I’m coming to grips with how that effects me, with what it means for being Eiren’s slave. I’ve always described our marriage as a “Female Led Relationship”, and, well, learning that you too are female sort of throws a wrench in that! Easy enough, It can be changed to a “Female Dominant Led Relationship”! Hah! Suck on that, verbiage!

There are lessons to be learned from the negatives too. I’m a woman now. My name is Evelyn and I am a transgender woman and, because of this, I’ve started to attempt to view myself as such. It isn’t such an easy thing, having so many years of fantasizing about being a woman, but never actually feeling that it was real, and then changing that and having to remind yourself that “Yes, it is real, you are a woman, Evelyn.” My kink is changing, but hot is still hot. Men submitting to women, women submitting to women, me submitting to women, and that’s where it is right there: I have to make the effort to relearn who I am. I’m a woman submitting to women and I want my porn to reflect that. Easy enough, right?

Wait… Where in the fuck did my porn go? I’ve come from having limitless representation to practically none and making this decision to transition in my life now has meant that I’ve abruptly lost privilege that never even occurred to me as something capable of being lost, and then I almost dismissed my loss.

You know what? I just figured it out.

It isn't the change, it's the representation. I think I've just experienced actually losing some of my privilege, albeit small...

This isn’t a small thing at all, it’s a huge thing and it disgusts me how nonchalantly I dismissed the issue, but I’m proud of myself for catching it. I’m proud of myself for recognizing that I need to be more mindful of women’s issues, even if I thought I was before realizing that I was transgender, because I may catch myself making larger mistakes in the future that could hurt others, too. The lesson to be learned here is that, even in something as basic to my life as pornography, I have less. Women routinely have less and I need to remember to be a part of the solution, I need remember that I’m allowed to have my own space in feminism and remind myself that it’s okay to make these mistakes as long as I recognize them or recognize being called out for it and learn from my mistakes.

My transition is my own and things are going to continue to change, especially my sexual health. Be aware, Evelyn. Be aware, be brave, and be ready to face the challenges of change and continue to change with them, for other women and for yourself.